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Horst Görtz Institute for IT-Security

DFG Re­se­arch Trai­ning Group UbiCrypt (GRK 1817/1)

New Challenges for Cryp­to­gra­phy in Ubi­qui­tous Com­pu­ting

We are in the midst of the shift toward ubi­qui­tous com­pu­ting. Mo­bi­le mul­ti­me­dia de­vices with DRM ser­vices, in­tel­li­gent web ap­p­li­ca­ti­ons, me­di­cal im­plants that com­mu­ni­ca­te or car-to-car com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on have be­co­me rea­li­ty. Such ubi­qui­tous ap­p­li­ca­ti­ons are ty­pi­cal­ly not con­fined to well-de­fined net­works but com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on takes place bet­ween small em­bed­ded nodes and the “cloud”, a large and often not well de­fined net­work con­sis­ting of PCs and ser­vers. Many of the new ap­p­li­ca­ti­ons are hea­vi­ly de­pen­dent on se­cu­ri­ty fea­tures, for in­stan­ce te­le­me­di­ci­ne or in­tel­li­gent traf­fic ma­nage­ment. Many cur­rent se­cu­ri­ty so­lu­ti­ons are not ap­p­lica­ble any more, e.g., be­cau­se of a lack of clear net­work bo­un­da­ries, re­sour­ce-cons­trained de­vices or new se­cu­ri­ty re­qui­re­ments like an­ony­mous pay­ment sche­mes on mo­bi­le to­kens.

The Re­se­arch Trai­ning Group (RTG) will in­ves­ti­ga­te cryp­to­gra­phic me­cha­nis­ms which form the fo­un­da­ti­on for se­cu­ri­ty so­lu­ti­ons in ubi­qui­tous com­pu­ting. The re­se­arch is struc­tu­red in three le­vels: cryp­to­gra­phic pri­mi­ti­ves, de­vice and sys­tem level. A com­mon theme is that new cryp­to­gra­phic me­thods are re­se­ar­ched for ap­p­li­ca­ti­ons which are di­stri­bu­ted and hea­vi­ly in­ho­mo­ge­neous. The re­se­arch to­pics range from cryp­to­gra­phic fo­un­da­ti­ons such as fully ho­mo­mor­phic en­cryp­ti­on, which is very de­s­i­ra­ble for pri­va­cy re­a­sons, over se­cu­ri­ty for me­di­cal im­plants to in­ter­net se­cu­ri­ty so­lu­ti­ons in­vol­ving new na­tio­nal ID cards.

A cen­tral goal of the trai­ning plan is an in­ter­di­sci­pli­na­ry and struc­tu­red Ph.D. phase with an in­no­va­ti­ve two-ad­vi­sor con­cept, a close cou­pling with the RUB Re­se­arch School and man­d­ato­ry re­se­arch vi­sits at lea­ding in­ter­na­tio­nal re­se­arch groups. A high qua­li­ty edu­ca­ti­on is as­su­red by tailo­red gra­dua­te cour­ses, se­mi­nars and an­nual sum­mer schools.